Last call has come and gone for UZO — the name, not the concept.
The Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission has rebranded the Unified Zoning Ordinance, or UZO, as the New Zoning Ordinances, or NewZO.
The name change is meant to acknowledge that the city of Savannah and unincorporated Chatham County will have separate zoning guidelines and not a unified ordinance.
The MPC will continue to work on one document, however. The commission staff will ultimately produce mirror versions of the ordinance for Savannah City Council and the Chatham County Commission to review and revise prior to potential adoption.
The MPC board wanted it recognized that it was no longer a unified document, MPC Executive Director Tom Thomson said. Hence the new name.
“To avoid the confusion of calling it unified, we renamed it,” said Charlotte Moore, the MPC’s special projects director. “At the same time, we wanted to keep the name similar sounding.”
The NewZO is being reviewed by the MPC board, a process expected to continue through at least December. The MPC staff is updating the draft in real time. As the end of the MPC board review nears, the public will be given 60 days notice that the public comment period is closing.
Once public comment ends, the MPC board will make a recommendation to the Savannah City Council and the Chatham County Commission to either approve or deny the new ordinances.
From there, the council and commission will perform their review, make their changes and vote to either adopt NewZO or stick with the existing ordinances, which date back to the early 1960s.
Updating the zoning ordinances has been a work in progress since 2007. The MPC staff produced a first draft of the UZO in 2011, but several trade organizations, including those involved in real estate, economic development, marina operations, auto sales and convenience stores balked at the initial draft.
The business community response led the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce and the Savannah Economic Development Authority to craft a letter to the MPC urging a sector-by-sector approach as part of the review process.
The pushback led the MPC board to push for a suspension of the process. Thomson and his staff opted instead to slow the review process and "scrub" and "polish" the draft.
Staff worked on the details for the first half of 2012 and released a new draft of the ordinance in July.
The MPC board has been reviewing that draft line-by-line in meetings since, and the MPC staff held a series of sector-by-sector meetings — one for the education sector, another for the lodging sector, another for retail and service sector, etc. — last winter.
The MPC staff also consulted with City Attorney Brooks Stillwell and his county counterpart, Jon Hart, during the latest review. The need for similar but separate ordinances became clear during those meetings, the MPC’s Thomson said.
“You have two government entities represented by separate legal staffs,” Thomson said. “The best approach is to work up one document and let each group tweak it to suit their needs.”
